'How employable are you?' Ron DeSantis insults students eyeing 'niche subjects' he wants to ban

15 May 2023

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) is touting his support for legislation that was proposed in February which Higher Ed Dive explained at the time "would upend some of the longest standing conventions of American higher education and introduce an unprecedented degree of state control, like forcing institutions to abandon gender studies programs."

House Bill 999 would "ban state colleges and universities from using funds to 'promote, support, or maintain any programs or campus activities that espouse diversity, equity, or inclusion [DEI] or Critical Race Theory rhetoric.' The bill would also give the state's board of governors the ability to remove 'any major or minor that is based on or otherwise utilizes pedagogical methodology associated with Critical Theory,'" CBS News added.

In a speech after he signed the bill on Monday, DeSantis urged prospective college students to leave the Sunshine State to pursue the degrees that he abhors and then warned them that if they do, they will struggle to find a job.

"If you want to do things like gender ideology go to Berkeley. Go to some of these other places. That's fine. It's fine," DeSantis said to cheers.

"And there's nothing — if that's what you wanna do there's, there's nothing wrong with that, uh, per se — but for us, with our tax dollars, we wanna focus on the classical mission of what a university is supposed to be. We don't want to be diverted into a lot of these niche subjects that are heavily politicized," DeSantis continued.

"We want to focus on the basics and I think what you've seen as these types of majors and courses. First of all, how, how employable are you with some of these majors? I mean, really it's, um, it's not a good, uh, academic, uh, uh, choice in terms of being able to be employable," DeSantis declared. "That's one of the reasons I think this whole student loan thing, universities should be on the hook for the student loans. If that were the case, they would make sure that their curriculum was really fit to be productive for the students when they graduate."

Watch DeSantis below or at this link.

Higher Ed Dive's report continues here. CBS News' is here.

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